CfP – “Rebellion as Revolution in the Caribbean during the Age of Revolutions” (AHA Panel proposal)
We are seeking papers for a panel at the 2019 AHA meeting in Chicago. In this panel, we will examine the history of slave revolt in the nineteenth century West Indies through the lens of bondspeople’s revolutionary identities and ideologies. We ask if slaves’ actions represented a rejection of their states’ ideology as well as of their own unfree condition. I have included the panel’s working abstract below. We currently have papers covering the British and Spanish Caribbean, but analysis of any slave movement during the Age of Revolutions will be considered – we feel that this topic fits well with the conference theme – “Loyalties.”
Working abstract:
This panel looks to interrogate the motivations of enslaved participants in slave rebellions within the context of the Revolutionary Era. We consider the relationship between slavery and independence ideologies to connect the abolitionist motivations of bondspeople to the republican paradigms that dominated political thought in the period. Age of Revolutions slave revolts, from Haiti’s independence to Cuba’s La Escalera conspiracy, have rightly been the subject of a great many excellent analyses. This panel seeks to build upon recent works by the likes of Robin Blackburn, Matthew Smith, Laurent DuBois, and Aisha Finch. In doing so, this panel argues that slave revolts shared much in common with the political revolutions of the early- to mid-nineteenth century in terms of the incentives of their participants as well as through elites’ reactions to them.
If you would like to be part of this panel, please email a paper abstract (300 words) and a brief bio or CV (250 words) to leliot@email.sc.edu (Lewis Eliot) no later than February 7.